Conan Doyle’s ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ is renowned as one of the most loved Sherlock Holmes mysteries, though interestingly doesn’t have much involvement from the detective himself. Alike to the other mysteries the case of the supernatural hound haunting the Baskerville family and resulting in the suspicious death of Sir Charles Baskerville is narrated by Dr Watson, whereas he too is the only one of the pair to go to the Devonshire Moors in order to investigate for the larger chunk of the book. 

The setting of the mystery was wonderful, the moors had an eerie gothic feel that echoed that of Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ and though set in Devonshire, Conan Doyle took much inspiration and the Baskerville name from the Herefordshire area, therefore reading the majority of the book whilst on a short trip to Herefordshire was very on theme. Whilst such personal context enhanced the read, another personal context did however diminish it. It feels unnatural to be relating a classic to such a modern novel as the initial startpoint, but I read Haddon’s ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time’ just before this, and that book decided to spoil the entire plot over the course of one page, which was mightily inconvenient given my reading intentions. For the most part I realised what was going on in the latter book and skipped over it so the mystery wasn’t completely ruined for me in advance. 

That being said, there wasn’t overly much to be ruined, the clues and solution were straightforward and the motive typical, in addition to there disappointingly being no sort of twist and the killer being identified by about the 2/3 mark of the book rather than being caught in the ending chapters. This did take some excitement that typically exists around mystery novels away. 

Despite such, the story was still well crafted, the supernatural elements surrounding the hound were engaging and the setting was brilliant.